Writing and Reading

Throughout The Message, Coates explores the power of reading and writing to educate and create change.

As a writer and journalist himself, Coates uses his personal reading and writing journeys as a throughway into his overarching discussion. In his opening essay, “Journalism Is Not a Luxury,” he asserts that “A love of language, of course, is the root of this self” (4). He goes on to share numerous anecdotes from his childhood to capture his early attachment to the written word. These anecdotes humanize Coates and convey the ways in which language can reach individual human hearts.

As a young person, Coates sought understanding through reading other writers. “[W]ords and stories” were “a treasure” that taught him about himself and the world around him (7). Coates then extends his argument to the present, by tasking his audience of young writers with “doing their part to save the...